Let's check out those huts.
Try to steal the inactive Orn's combat scroll. He doesn't need it, after all!
Consider if those wrecked ships are worth exploring. Bonus dungeon or driftwood?
If the party agrees, head down to the huts on the beach so we can meet the locals.
With an unappetising grin on his face, Orn completely refuses to go down to the beach.
"There is power there," is all he concedes, pointing North at the building. Noone convinced, he strides off towards it resolutely. A while later, indistuinguishable figures meet him halfway and escort him to the compund. It's more than a little creepy, really.
You stride off down to the shipwrecks and huts. The air smells wonderful, almost sweet, and even the sight of the delicious golden liquid of the lake is wonderful, almost inebriating, really. You feel... freer, less inhibited, a slight devil-may-care attitude taking over every member of the party. Which makes the swarm of mostly naked, purring people that run out to greet you seem almost entirely in place. They cluster round you, calling inanities excitedly, half comprehensible, half in some oddly made-up, lisping tongue that even Fringefolk, with their natural gift for every near-human language, have trouble deciphering.
The oddest things about these moronic-looking fellows, most of whom are crowding round you and gently tugging at your shirtsleeves, are the strange growths sprouting from their bodies. Flowerlike stalks, luscious blooms and isolated petals like enameled wafers grow from varying places, some with hair interspersed with lumens, other with vegetation spurting from their backs, a few with limbs almost entirely overrun with sensous flowers. Their irregular condition doesn't appear to bother them at all, though you see a few lying down in the sun, lethargic and content, obviously somewhat more vegetative than the rest. They lead you along the amber shoreline, white crystals of sand crunching under your feet, to a certain hut made of driftwood and wrecked ship, a little larger than the rest. Inside awaits a... less naked person. He speaks comprehensibly, an older man scattered with petals over his shoulders and arms like welts, wearing an old pair of trousers made from leather and fishing gear.
"I know where you've come from. The lake, you see... I don't get it as much as that lot," he says gesturing to the crowd of beaming locals at the entrance, "but in return... it tells me things. Odd way to get knowledge, but clean, not like the buggers on that scorched earth mansion yonder."
He points in the general direction of the way Orn went. Or maybe outside, or at the sun, this guy has pretty shaky hands.
"I've got something for you... washed up, poor thing... left behind, I suppose. Want to see it?"
You notice a figure, prone on a rush mat, completely covered by a blanket.
(Apologies!)
"You may meet whatever cretins call that their homes. My destiny waits in the wrecked ships over yonder."
You peel away from the rest of the party as they follow the moronic savages, and stand in the now gashed-open hold of the plant-covered vessel, sunlight rushing in though a jagged hole in the deck.
The ship appears to be almost entirely organic in nature. Bushes grow all over it bearing tiny berries, dry and hard, while the wood of the ship is mingled with the bushes to such an extent that one cannot tell the two apart. Indeed, the shipwreck, with it's interior empty of all but sweet-smelling sand, and smooth, markless walls, seems not only organic, but untouched, newly formed, unsailed before wreckage.
Come to think of it, you did see a few larger, more marked ships from the higher meadow, some even with a few indiscernible objects on deck, but you lost sight of them in the multitude of wrecks. The rest of the party appears to be going into some weirdo's hut.
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Topic: The Way of Exile [A Procedurally Generated Surreal RTD] 4/4 (Read 8378 times)